Laurels should only be used for the ascended amulet. It is currently the only way to get said items atm. Ascended earrings can be gotten through the guild commendations and the ascended rings drop in level 10+ fractals. Once all your characters have the amulet then I'd worry about spending them on other items.

The best use of karma is the purchase of the obsidian shards you'll need for creating a legendary weapon. Only the temple of Balthazar has them for karma and they are needed in crafting the mystic clovers and on their own for a legendary. You need about 500 or so of them and they cost 2100 karma each. The second best use of Karma is the armor and trinkets from the temples in Orr. It's exotic and comes in many variations. Though you'll probably have to visit a number of them to get a complete set as no one temple has a complete set of armor with a particular stat. Each temple does sell a particular stat combo for trinkets though. Each pieces (armor or trinket) costs @ 43,000 karma. You may need to guest to other servers to find a particular temple open to purchase the items if it's not open on Yak's Bend.

I agree with Bunter for Laurels - Ascended Amulets are the way to go since there really is no other way to get them, and they're really damn good!

The class loot boxes and material bags are generally a waste since they're just another pull of the slot machine but hey, maybe people get lucky!

As far as Karma goes - I'd add the note to Bunter's comments that Obsidian Shards are ONLY used for Legendary Weapons, they have no other currently known use. If a Legendary Weapon isn't on your horizon then the armor is a solid investment. Dulfy has a guide ( http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-temp...ma-armor-sets/ ) on which armor stats can be obtained from which temples, worth noting specifically the "Soldier" stats (Power/Toughness/Vitality) and "Rabid" (Precision/Toughness/Condition Damage) as neither set can be crafted and are very strong stat combos for many builds.

The only other use I've found for karma are the "Beaded" weapons - they essentially let you make level 60 rare weapons using only karma and platinum/wood. These sell for a non-worthless amount on the trade post and I guess could technically be thrown at the Mystic Toilet to hope for an upgrade.

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It's hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat...

Another addition for Karma use is to buy Orichalcum (350 karma) and Mithril (140 karma) gathering devices.
I tend to buy about 12 when I am around and divide them over my chars or put them in the few open storage slots I have.

Personally I'd prefer to get armor with dungeon tokens - 42k karma each (IIRC) is quite a lot. If you want to convert it to gold (rather inefficiently, but personally I couldn't find something of more use to me) check this out:

Think I took a wrong turn and ended up here. Scratching legendary off my to do list. 500 mystic clovers indeed.
So, I use laurels for the amulets and karma for the temple armors. After all my chars are properly dressed I may go into the obsidian shard reatail biz.

Attila -- you and I are completely on the same page there. If I can gear out all my toons and find myself still earning the influence and the gold to consider starting a legendary.... well. That's a long way off

I do the armor. It is a lot of influence, but not out of reach if you do some map clearing and some dungeons on the way to getting it. Amulets with laurels, like everyone else. (Because no matter how much fun it would be, I just don't need a never-ending-mystery-cat-tonic.)

Remember some of the ascended items obtainable with laurels are cheaper in WvW as you add badges to the price. Check there before you purchase them in pve. Karma armor is fine for exotics but the problem lies in the fact that you can't salvage it so if you put on expensive runes and change your mind, you can't easily pull them off as the extractors are way over priced. if you intend to keep the armor exotic and slowly work towards ascended armor, karma armor is fine. If you have a character you know is going for ascended you might want to craft the armor or get via dungeons tokens as they can be salvaged and you can then transfer the runes to the ascended armor.

Grey if you do have an extreme excess of laurels and don't need ascended amulets, I also suggest using them to buy t6 crafting bags at 1 laurel each. Every bag has 3 t6 trophy mats in it. Even if you only wanted them to sell, it's still an extra 1g a day just for doing your daily.